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and felt like they were moving in slow motion, like everything around me was unfolding in slow motion.
    I heard their screams, smelled their sweat, but I couldn’t take my attention away from that moment.
    That moment I’d felt the tingling in my body.
    The upset.
    The anger.
    The moment I’d squeezed my fists together and heard the windows smash.
    But more than anything, I couldn’t focus on anything but the windows.
    The glass wasn’t inside the classroom.
    The windows had smashed from the inside.
    “Come on, Kyle,” Mrs. Porter said. She put a hand on my back. “We’ll deal with you later.”
    I stood still for a few seconds. Listened to the alarm ring through the school, the panic spread like wildfire to more of the classrooms.
    And then I took a deep breath and followed the rest of the crowd out of the class, out of the school.
    I didn’t think much else about the incident in the classroom for the rest of the day. Mostly because I was just relieved to be able to leave school early.
    It felt a bit surreal. Like something… weird had happened to me, sure. I felt a bit strange.
    But nowhere near as strange as I was about to feel.
    Nowhere as strange as what was ahead.

7
    W hen Damon told me he was taking me somewhere to forget about the problems of the last two days, a soccer game was not what I was expecting.
    “It’ll be fun,” Damon said, as we walked towards the Yankee Stadium to see New York City FC. The floodlights were bright. I could see other people walking towards the stadium entrance, hear the crowd inside with all their noise and… well, racket that I didn’t enjoy, and wanted to steer far away from. The smell of dingy hotdog stands was strong in the air, making me want to hurl.
    “How in any way, shape or form do you think I’d find this fun?”
    “It’s football,” Damon said, grinning. He chewed down on some pink cotton candy. He was wearing a New York Yankees shirt that looked way too small for his bulbous belly, and his hair was swept back behind his ears in a way that I’d never seen him attempt before. “It’s what manly men do.”
    “No,” I said, trying to keep my cool, as impossible as that was. “This is soccer . It’s not football.”
    “Football and soccer are the same things, right?”
    “No. No, they aren’t. Not unless you’re British.”
    “I’m not British.”
    “Then this isn’t a football game we’re going to.”
    The realization clicked on Damon’s face. His eyes widened. “Oh. So this… this isn’t football?”
    I shook my head and sighed. I wasn’t in the mood for dicking around right now. “We shouldn’t be here. We should… we should just go back.”
    Damon smacked my back. “No chance.” He pushed me forward so I edged towards the turnstiles faster than I’d have liked.
    “Damon, please—”
    “Coming through!” Damon said. People glared at me as Damon nudged me past them. I tried to fight free of Damon, to run away from him, but before I knew it, I was at the turnstiles, the security guy glaring at me and asking for my ticket.
    “Still want to back out?” Damon asked, a piece of cotton candy dangling from his chin.
    I sighed. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
    We pushed our way inside the stadium. Truth be told, it was a lot more crowded than I thought soccer matches got. Soccer was kind of like football’s weak cousin here in the States. It was big in Europe, and the rest of the world, but from what I gathered from… well, the people around me and online who had a moderate interest in sport, soccer was dull. Which I found hard to accept seeing as I couldn’t think of anything duller than football.
    We stepped out into the seating area. The field was massive and very green. The people around me all sipping their beers, eating their fast food… they just looked different to me right off the bat. Like they were supposed to be here; like they were comfortable here.
    “Where we sat?” I asked Damon.
    Damon shrugged.